I guess it’s always interesting when you stare the possibility of the end in the face.
I am not sure if I did or didn’t.

When that earthquake rumbled through Cuernavaca at 1:14 p.m. Tuesday, I honestly questioned my mortality.

I sat in the bedroom of the guest house of our awesome land lady in Los Tabachines community in south Cuernavaca.
Cuernavaca is about 50 miles south of the Mexico City.

Anyway, it was a typical Tuesday, I was trying to get through writer’s block and fulfill my freelance obligations to various clients.

But then, the earth shook.

It didn’t just shake, the ground was moving.

Jill, who was in the kitchen, yelled, ‘’EARTHQUAKE.’’

I knew what it was but I was just in shock.

I talked to my dad today and he said we had been through a couple of tremors growing up in Tokyo.

I had felt nothing like this.

I could not even up stand up.

Nori, our faithful Belgian Sheepdog who had been watching me from the bed, jumped up and we somehow got to the kitchen and then to the back yard. Jill was there on her knees. She told me she could not walk because of the quake.

She told me that she could not believe I was still standing. When I thought about it, I was surprised too.

Anyway, the ground kept shaking and I was thinking if it keeps going, the house is going to crumble.

Somehow, the earth stopped shaking and quaking.

We looked at each other and then at the fountain where the water was bubbling over. I didn’t know what to think.

I could not put much into perspective. We had no power, no internet, no nothing.

It was just as stunning that it all came back within eight hours. I had no idea how big the quake was and when I was reconnected to the world, I could not believe the outpouring wondering if we were OK, especially the good people at the Monitor.
We were OK.
And that was the most amazing feeling ever.
John Severance is the former editor of the Los Alamos Monitor and is happy to still be among the living in Cuernavaca, Mexico.